Freedom Of Navigation Agreement

Posted by on September 21, 2021

Unfortunately, the Pentagon has not explained the legal justification for the operation, so the intent of the USS Dewey operation remains unclear. However, the practical implementation of these shipping regimes raises many difficult questions. While the United States defends liberal interpretations, China takes very restrictive positions regarding the navigation rights of foreign warships. Most developed Western countries have traditionally aligned themselves with the AMERICAN interpretation, while many developing Asian countries – including, for example.B. India – have views closer to those of China (Kaye 2008). Although China has meanwhile established the second most powerful maritime power in the world, its attitude is still reminiscent of an uncertain developing country. Like many other coastal States, China is striving to use international law, including the Convention on the Law of the Sea, to extend its maritime rights and jurisdictions and establish control over adjacent maritime spaces and resources. However, unlike other Powers with deep-sea navies and, like other developing coastal States, it also attempts to limit the movement of foreign warships by spreading legal interpretations beyond the provisions of the Convention. As has already been said, the American commitment to freedom of navigation dates back to a 1778 agreement with France, which firmly enshrined freedom of navigation as a legal use at the bilateral level. In the twentieth century, Woodrow Wilson defended freedom of navigation and made it point 2 of his Fourteen Points (see Freedom of the Seas).

The United States has not ratified the 1982 DECLOS Treaty,[24] but is a party to the previous 1958 Convention on the High Seas. Despite its failure to formally ratify the Convention on the Law of the Sea, the United States now considers the Convention on the Law of the Sea to be part of customary international law and is committed to respecting and enforcing the law. [25] “To our naval and air patrol. now it is the duty to maintain the American policy of freedom of the seas. 1 – President Franklin D. Roosevelt, Fireside Chat, September 11, 1941 All this means that there is no simple idea of what constitutes freedom of navigation, except in the most general sense of the word. The term “freedom of navigation” may mean something else depending on the geographical, political or legal situation in which it is applied. In addition, what could be called “freedom” can have restrictions, in practice navigation is rarely a true “freedom”. For U.S. policymakers, the willingness of coastal states to extend territorial control in connection with the regulation of the seas for economic, environmental, and other purposes, known as “creeping jurisdiction,” has long been a concern (Wilson and Kraska 2009). . .

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Last modified on September 21, 2021

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